When Viggo Mortensen first started writing The Dead Don’t Hurt, his second outing as a writer and director, he didn’t immediately think he was about to make a Western.
The Civil War drama centers on Vivienne (Vicky Krieps), a resilient French-Canadian pioneer woman making her way in 1860s America. Mortensen plays a Danish immigrant named Holger who settles down with Vivienne in a corrupt Nevada town after a chance meeting in San Francisco. But when Holger joins the Union Army, Vivienne is left to navigate life in a hamlet plagued by lawlessness.
“Initially, when I was writing the story, I didn’t know it was a Western. I certainly grew up watching them; I like them. They were a big part of my generation,” he says in a Zoom interview. “But I started writing a story with an image in mind of a little girl named Vivienne who is stubborn and free-spirited and very independent-minded. Maybe even a little mischievous. It was kind of inspired by my mother’s personality and where she grew up (in Watertown, New York) and ended her days.”
Then he thought about putting that free-thinking, strong-willed woman in the mid-19th century on the western frontier and imagining how she’d face those challenges. “It’s a society that’s essentially lawless and dominated by a few powerful corrupt men who are not averse to using violence to achieve their goals,” Mortensen says. “I thought that would make things difficult and more interesting for her. So it became a Western.”
Mortensen, 65, latched on to Krieps after watching the Luxembourgish actress’ performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, in which she starred opposite Daniel Day-Lewis.
“She had a really strong presence and I thought she was great in that film,” Mortensen recalls. “When she said yes, we knew we could make a good, original Western.”
The Dead Don’t Hurt, which was released on digital and VOD this week, was one of the highlights at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Mortensen, a familiar face in the city over the years, stayed for the whole week, participating in lengthy Q&As afterwards.
The film followed Mortensen’s penchant for picking roles and stories that examine the human experience.
After global stardom thanks to his part as the sword-wielding Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy more than 20 years ago, Mortensen has purposefully looked to be a part of films that leave an impression — both on himself and the audience.
He’s collaborated several times with filmmaker David Cronenberg — who cast Mortensen in A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method and Crimes of the Future — and earned accolades for performances in 2016’s Captain Fantastic and 2018’s Green Book, in which he starred opposite Oscar winner Mahershala Ali.
In 2020, he wrote, directed and starred in Falling, an elegiac film inspired by his parents’ battle with dementia. The film landed in the middle of the pandemic and didn’t have the impact he had hoped. “It was a real shame, especially for Lance Henriksen (who plays a dementia sufferer coming to live with his gay son). But the movie exists and people will be able to discover it,” he says of the experience.
He resists categorization, wanting to make his mark by leaving viewers feeling something when the lights go out and his stories start.
“Even if the movie didn’t turn out as well as I would have hoped in some cases, the blueprint and the intention were good. Those are the stories I hope find me and I get lucky and find them,” Mortensen says.
On a recent Thursday, calling from Europe, somewhere in the mountains, Mortensen spoke more about Westerns, the newly announced Lord of the Rings films and why the theatrical experience still matters.
This is your second film as a director, and it’s vastly different from Falling. Did you look at other Westerns for inspiration?
I grew up watching Westerns and I re-watched ones that I saw as a kid as well as other ones. There were many things I could find. We were looking for details that we could pay attention to. The interest was to make this story historically accurate. The weapons, the costumes, the architecture of the town, all had to be right. Plus showing a diversity ethnically … unless you were indigenous, everyone was an immigrant back then. It was important for us to reflect that. But it was unusual to have an ordinary woman be the main character in a Western and staying with her at all times, even when their male partner goes off to war. I was interested in seeing what happens when the man goes away. It’s the women that keep society moving. They keep towns together, and make sure the kids fed and schooled. I just hadn’t seen that before. So I was curious about focusing on that … when they’re left alone, what are the consequences for her? … How does she survive? How does she make do?
I imagine after Lord of the Rings, and the fame that came with those films, you could have taken your work as an actor in a vastly different direction. How did you navigate your career after the success of those films?
Sometimes people will say, ‘You’ve made great choices in your career.’ To some degree, that’s true. But people have this idea that you can do whatever you want when you’ve been in something like the Lord of the Rings, which did incredible things for all of us. We did have more options, but really, you can only say yes if someone is asking you and inviting you to come on board. What you can do is say no to more things, I guess (laughs). But I’ve always been on the lookout for movies that I thought would be challenging … things where I would have learned something. Right after Lord of the Rings, I got a chance to work with David Cronenberg on A History of Violence. I would not have been cast in that role if it had not been for the success of Lord of the Rings. So you have to be lucky, and you have to use that lucky break intelligently. But it depends on what you want. Some people just want to make lots of money and be famous, and that’s fine. But my goal didn’t really change after Lord of the Rings. Before that, I was trying to be in good stories that would be memorable and worth the effort it took to participate in them.
I know there’s a new Lord of the Rings — The Hunt for Gollum — coming in 2026. Did you get a heads-up on that? Are you open to returning as Aragorn?
I just started hearing the buzz about that from journalists. I haven’t read anything and I don’t know what it is. I know that they’re serious about trying to do it, but I’m not sure how they’re going to do it or what their intentions are. I’m looking forward to being in touch with them and finding out what they have in mind. You never know. It was a great experience to be part of the Tolkien universe and everything he based those stories on. They tapped into everything that I’ve liked — Celtic mythology and Nordic mythology and history — so it would be great to be involved in that again, but I have very little that I can say about it.
Eastern Promises was a fantastic crime thriller that landed you your first Oscar nomination. It’s always been a favourite of mine and I know there had been talk of a sequel. Whatever happened with that?
It never came together in the right way, I guess. There was an attempt, but it wasn’t quite ready. I wish we had made another one. But I’ve played a lot of characters that I like, whether it was in Green Book or the other movies with Cronenberg that I did. There have been many roles that I’ve enjoyed. There’s a movie called Loin des hommes— Far from Men— which played at TIFF as well, and it’s a great story. It’s in French and Arabic and it was a big challenge. It’s based on an Albert Camus story, if you haven’t seen it, I think you’d like it a lot.
The Dead Don’t Hurt was a beautiful-looking movie. I wish I could have seen it on a big screen when it was here for TIFF. Over the years, you’ve been at the festival with a variety of different projects. Why does the theatrical experience still matter to you?
Because there’s nothing like it. I always prefer to see a movie in the cinema. It’s a special experience. The lights go down and you’re sitting there with a bunch of strangers or friends or even just by yourself. You’re hopeful, and you’re focused on that and nothing else. You’re not at home looking at your phone or getting up and going to the fridge; you’re sitting there and you’re willing the story to transport you and inspire you and make you reflect on your own life and the time you’re living in. I think the first 10 or 15 minutes in a movie theatre, you are open to anything the director wants to try. As long as there’s something that catches your interest, then you’re on your way. And you’ll go all the way with that person’s story. There’s nothing like it. I don’t think it will ever fully go away, but I do wish that the powerful well-to-do streaming companies would focus more on movie theatres because they are the ones that could be the saviours of the little movie houses that people will miss — and have missed in many towns where they’ve disappeared — if they are gone. If they were willing to be a little less greedy, we could have a theatre experience for everyone, not just a few famous directors. And they could still make lots of money streaming as well. I hope they will make more of an effort in that regard, but I don’t know if they will because of profits and investors. People want immediate gratification financially and they’re not willing to be patient sometimes and maybe share some of the profits with movie theatres. If they can keep it all to themselves, well, all the better. But it does sink some of the small movie houses and that’s a shame.
The Dead Don’t Hurt is available now on digital and VOD.